Later in life I realized that He is present in His people gathered together in worship, ie, “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in their midst”.  And, He is present in His word as it is read.  The rhema reading of His word can transform our hearts.  Finally, He is with us in the real presence of His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  Those three instances represent His way of being ‘with us’ always.  All three are beautiful and powerful, but lack His physical touch.  Can we really expect to experience His touch?

It never dawned on me until a good friend explained that His actual touch is given to us by our friends.  When a friend touches our hand or puts an arm around our shoulder or gives us a hug, it is Jesus reaching out to touch us through them.

So, let us thank God for our friends for bringing His gentle touch to us!  Let us reciprocate and reach out and touch them in His name!

It also shows that the Lord is always reminding us to make sure our relationship with Him is a personal one.  Many of us are satisfied with knowing ‘about Him’ as if that knowledge alone was sufficient.  While knowing about the Lord may be sufficient to impress others with our knowledge, it does not bring us the closeness our heart really needs.  Nor does it give us all that we need to walk daily in His truth.

Psalm 86 says, “Teach me, O Lord, Your way, that I may walk in Your truth; direct my heart that I may respect Your name.

Knowing God’s ‘way’ is far more detailed than knowledge about Him.  It’s like that 4-year-old child who runs through the room where his dad is sitting on the sofa.  When he sees his dad he goes back and crawls up in his lap and snuggles up close and listens to His heart beat.  Maybe no words pass between them but the bond grows.  Finally, he jumps down and runs off to play.  The bond of love will continue to grow in the days ahead and the child will watch what his father does and learn from it.  Others will say of him when he is grown that the acorn didn’t fall far from the tree.

Meanwhile, dad sits there on the sofa with a tear forming in his eyes as he relishes the fact that his son wanted to be close to him.

Let us find ways to crawl up in God’s lap and listen to His heart beat.  Let us learn His ways so we can walk in His truth because of that growing bond between us.  Hopefully, people will say that we as Christian acorns didn’t fall far from the tree of God.  And, just maybe we’ll cause a tear of love to form in our Father’s eye.

Today is World Marriage Day!  We celebrate the sacrament that is marriage.  It is sponsored by World Wide Marriage Encounter & began in Baton Rouge in 1981.  This is the sacrament where two people pledge their love to one another for a lifetime.

Fifty years later, after children, grandchildren, & great grandchildren, they look into one another’s tired eyes and say, “What were we thinking?”

With the First Reading and the Gospel telling us all about Leprosy, you might ask Marriage Encounter the very same thing, “What were you thinking to choose this weekend?”

Even though Marriage seems to be under assault today and the world does not offer husbands & wives much support anymore, Marriage itself offers spouses many positives.  Studies have shown over & over the positive effects brought about by Marriage, ie, long life & quality.

Someone once said that Marriage provides an environment of sharing where we double our joy & feel one-half our pain.

When we live with another up close, in Marriage, we come face to face with joy and pain as we live our own lives and live vicariously through the other – double exposure. Offering simple presence to one another when we are hurting, when we are confused & uncertain, can bring both of us, deep joy.

It brings the quiet joy of being there for another, and living in deep solidarity with them in the human family. It reminds us that Jesus is there with us as well.

True joy is often hidden.  It can be fragile.  True joy is being with another as a friend, a fellow traveler, on our journey through life.

Again, when we live with another up close, in Marriage, we are called to daily forgiveness.  Forgiving does not mean forgetting.  When we forgive another, the memory of the wound might stay with us for a long time.  But, forgiveness changes the way we remember.

It can convert the curse into a blessing.  When we, as children, forgive our parents for some slight, when we as aging parents forgive our children for their lack of attention toward us, or forgive our friends for their failure to support us as we were going through a crisis, we no longer have to experience ourselves as victims of events over which we had no control.  But, it is a choice, we are the “Nation of the Offended” & at times enjoy holding on.

Forgiveness allows us to claim our own power, & not let those events destroy us.  It enables them to become opportunities to deepen the wisdom of our hearts.  Forgiveness, indeed, heals memories, & puts a smile on God’s face as well.

Again, when we live with another up close, in Marriage, we come to understand more fully, the gift of friendship.

Friendship is one of the greatest gifts a human being can receive.  It is a bond beyond common goals, common interests, or even common histories.  Sometimes, friends have almost nothing in common, yet enjoy being together.

It is one of life’s strongest bonds & when it is lived out in life’s closest human environment, that of Marriage, it is deeper than a shared fate and more intimate than any other bond.

Friendship is being with the other in a unity of souls that gives nobility and sincerity to love.  Friendship makes all of life shine brightly, and it makes a Marriage shine with a brightness for all to see.

As I said in the beginning, Marriage offers many positive qualities and benefits to the two people involved.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of all is that it softens our loneliness and alleviates our isolation.

 This brings us to our Readings today on Leprosy.

The OT Law dealing with Leprosy prescribed separation from the village.  Some of the diseases of the skin were not, in fact, leprosy(Hansen’s Disease), but until the priests could be sure, the person was treated “as if” & isolated.

People declared unclean because of Leprosy had to live apart from their families, usually outside of town.  Some lived on the hillsides overlooking their own homes and could see family members going about their normal lives.

That must have been especially cruel, yet, what else could society do since it had no real cure.

Leprosy is a slow developing disease of the nerve endings, with lesions & skin sluffing that can lead to death over time.

During the time of Jesus, the more immediate fear was  not so much death, but the required isolation.  That pain of loneliness was the stronger motivator for lepers to approach Jesus asking & begging to be cured.

When He healed them of their physical illness, He was also healing them of their isolation from their families to which they so desperately wanted to return.  They longed to return to those benefits of Married life we talked about earlier.

In light of our readings, the symbolic question for us to consider today is:  What is our equivalent of leprosy?  What causes our isolation and aloneness?

Certainly, there are lifestyles that promote, even demand, aloneness such as widowhood, religious life, empty nests, divorce, and major illnesses, to mention a few.

Perhaps the saddest form of loneliness is that which we bring on ourselves by our behavior.  Unlike the lifestyle induced loneliness, behavior caused loneliness sometimes goes on below our own radar.  We are not aware that we cause it.

Most of the time it’s simple stuff, like for example, in conversation:

-     Being a know it all, (sweetest people can be that way)

-     Talking only about ourselves, incessantly, not allowing others to get a word in

-     Being negative or complaining, we all prefer happy people

-     My personal favorite, being a left-brained, hard headed German who even tics people off trying to be funny

Small things; we’re not axe-murderers, but we can be very lonely due to our own small behavior paterns.

If our problem is a lack of awareness; if we don’t know why people back away from us, then I have a great prayer for you, honed by many years of use by me.

It’s called the personal responsibility prayer: “What is there in me, Oh Lord, that evokes that kind of response in them toward me?”  And, it’s corollary, “Please send someone into my life that I trust who will speak the truth I need to hear about me”.   Two Powerful prayers…

It’s World Marriage Day, let’s resolve to do a little Spring-Cleaning.  Lent is right around the corner, 10 days until Ash Wednesday.  Lent gives us a great opportunity to examine how we treat our spouses & friends & others.

Maybe during Lent this year, we can re-double our efforts to be more Kind to those close to us, Building them up, Encouraging them, & Treating them as if they were the most valuable person in our world.

 Who knows, maybe they’ll live up to how we treat them, and even return the favor!

When you consider the concept of God’s every response to us is the most loving response, it’s hard to reconcile that concept with the way life plays out sometimes.

A well-known evangelist recently said that he had always thought there were good times and bad times and that God must maintain some kind of balance.  But as he considers his own life he is having to change that viewpoint.  Today, he says that it now seems to him that life is like a set of railroad tracks that run side by side, the good and the bad coexisting all the time.  True, he says, there are times when one seems to be more prevalent than the other, but both are always present nonetheless.

He states, that even in the worst of times there is good going on around us if we will refocus our view we will see it and that will soften some of the pain.  I have come to believe his new side by side viewpoint is more accurate than the old flip-flop viewpoint and therefore appreciate the quote that is the title of this piece, “Life is like licking honey from a thorn”.

Perhaps the saddest form of loneliness is that which we bring on ourselves by our behavior.  Unlike the situational loneliness described above, behavior induced loneliness sometimes goes on below our own radar.  We are not aware that our behavior is causing our problem.  As someone noted, awareness is the first step in correction our problems.

With that in mind, let’s look at a few of the behavior patterns that negatively affect our relationships with others.  Some of the sweetest people can still be know-it-alls.  No matter what the topic, they know more than others.  It may be presented sweetly, but others like to also ‘know’ things, too.  If we deny others the opportunity to contribute they will not be back, they will not invite us to go for coffee or a movie or lunch, and we are left wondering why.  Simply put, let others tell us stuff we may already know.  It can be a ministry.

Sometimes it is nothing other than the need to fill silent periods that turns off our potential friends.  We feel compelled to ‘Keep it going’ and there is no time left open to digest our thoughts or the thoughts of others.  The quality of our conversations suffer and we are not thought of as someone others want to spend time around.

God forbid we get the reputation for spreading private thoughts we have been entrusted with.  Or, worse, twisting pieces of their truth to make it more entertaining or titillating to others.  That will not serve as fertile ground for lasting friendships.

One common behavior that causes us problems is being negative or complaining about things.  People are attracted to others who are happy.  We don’t have to entertain or even try to be funny, just positive.  A good old fashion attitude adjustment  that leaves us with the ability to be a quiet ray of sunshine for everyone we meet will go far to alleviate the loneliness we so desperately want to escape.  Our God can help us, if we will only spend a little time with Him asking for His help.  Ask Him specifically to cross our paths with another human being who has the qualities we need to improve our lot.  Then watch for them and imitate them.

Then one day as I rode along in my car with my new GPS system attached to my windshield, I missed a turn in the directions I had inputed and I heard my GPS say, “Recalculating…turn right at the next corner to return to the directions to your destination.”  I did not turn at the next corner, and the GPS repeated its spiel about “Recalculating…”.

At that point, I had an epiphany about God’s perfect plan versus my free will.  He does have a perfect plan about where He wants us to end up at the end of our life, but He flexes that plan to factor in our free will along the way.  He “Recalculates” as needed to ultimately get us to the right place He has for us.

So, the next time you hear your GPS say it is “Recalculating” take a moment to thank God that he loves us so much He wants to respect the free will He gave to us and factor it into His overall plan for our lives in such a way that at any given moment we can be walking in His perfect plan and still have some input into how that plan plays out.

1) Wealth without work – Getting something for nothing

2)Pleasure without conscience – What’s in it for me

3)Knowledge without Character – Putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager

4)Business without morality – Use the Golden Rule as a minimum

5)Science without humanity – Science can degenerate into man against humanity

6)Religion without sacrifice – No cheap grace

7)Politics without principle - What do I do to get re-elected at all costs

(Published in Principle Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey)

The Bishop spent several minutes alone praying with her.  Later he told us that he had asked her to pray for him, that her prayers were stronger than his because in these moments the Lord was closer to her.

After returning to the rectory to pick up his belongings in preparation to return to Savannah, he emerged still visibly shaken by the experience.  He said, “Never in my life have I felt so humbled to bring that much happiness to another human being just by showing up to visit them; I was the one blessed.”

Such humility was obviously why God chose him to be a Bishop years ago.